Launched in early June, Bardowl, an app from Britain that connects readers (or listeners) with streaming audiobooks, has been hailed as the Spotify or Netflix for audiobooks. In competition with Amazon’s Audible service, Bardowl delivers a large selection of audiobooks from, but not limited to, Penguin, MacMillan, AudioGo, & Wiley, as part of a £9.99 per month subscription. That monthly fee gives unlimited access to Bardowl’s entire catalog, not just individual titles: unlimited hours of access to an unlimited amount of available books.

Bardowl also offers offline functionality, for internet-less travel such as flights & subway rides, in the form of up to three hours of stored audio on the iPhone. There’s also a way for listeners to share what they’re listening to: users may post links to custom thirty-second extracts on Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn.

Its pre-established rival, Audible, offers its service through a download-only format, & charges by the book on a range of subscriptions from monthly to yearly service. The Guardian described the two competitors, saying: “Audible is the a la carte Itunes to Bardowl’s subscription Spotify.”

Adam Boretz, the audiobook blogger at Publishers Weekly, notes, “while the service does seem pretty cool, it’s only available in the United Kingdom at the moment due to territorial rights. However, the company says it has plans to launch in the United States & is in discussions with U.S. publishers.”

Links: http://bardowl.com/ , Guardian , Publishers Weekly.